Don Carlo, Royal Opera House, review: 'under-directed but with much to enjoy vocally'

The management hasn’t had much luck with this revival of a work that many would rank as Verdi’s greatest achievement. Both the star baritone and soprano scheduled to sing Rodrigo and Elisabetta dropped out a month or so ago, and this week the mezzo-soprano singing the page Tebaldo went down too. I doubt whether Bertrand de Billy was anybody’s first choice of conductor either: he’s doubling up here with duties on L’Elisir d’amore later this month, and his lucid, well-paced but essentially lightweight account of Verdi’s magnificent score suggested that Donizetti’s comedy might be his more natural habitat.

In the circumstances, it’s not surprising that the cast didn’t gel on the first night and the performance generated little dramatic urgency. Nicholas Hytner had returned to rehearse his slickly efficient and generally handsome 2008 production, a staging that falters badly only in a faintly ludicrous presentation of the problematic auto-da-fé scene. But nowhere does it scratch beneath the surface or bring the human tragedy and its political dilemmas home: all we witnessed here was opera singers standing where they’d been told to stand and carving conventional gestures – nowhere more so than in that enthralling life-or-death encounter between Philip (Ildar Abdrazakov) and the Grand Inquisitor (an under-powered Paata Burchuladze). The show remains, in other words, under-directed and earthbound.

Don Carlos Opera performed at the Royal Opera HouseCredit:
Alastair Muir

In purely vocal terms, there was much to enjoy. Andrea Mastroni, David Junghoon Kim and Angela Simkin made their mark in small roles. Christoph Pohl, substituting for Ludovic Tézier, sang a warmly virile Rodrigo, and Abdrazakov, a younger Filippo than usual, made something intimately touching of the ruminative “Ella giammai m’amo”. Ekaterina Semenchuk was a rather mumsy Eboli, but delivered both her arias with firm-toned aplomb.

Kristin Lewis, substituting for Krassimira Stoyanova as Elisabetta, revealed an ample and elegant lyric soprano that came beautifully into focus for her big scene in Act V. If only she had found richer emotional rapport with her Carlo – a miscast Bryan Hymel, whose high-lying tenor didn’t seem comfortable and who tended to grandstand his way through this complex character.

Nothing can persuade me that the best version of this opera – revised several times by Verdi after its Paris premiere in 1867 – is the final one used here, and I very much hope when the time comes (soon, please) for a new production at Covent Garden, something closer to the French original will be restored.